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What follows is a compendium of educated guesses and forecasts, and the editors at STORES would like to think that most of them have value. Still, if we had to sum up our expectations for 2013 in one word, it would be "convergence" - tying together the web, Big Data, analytics, mobile, social and all things digital to deliver a seamless experience to shoppers...

STORES' annual predictions feature is the result of months spent absorbing and processing the insights of numerous retail experts. STORES wishes to acknowledge the individuals and organizations who generously shared their time and views on key topics... David Dorf and Michael Webster, Oracle; Gary Penn, QuikSilver; Michael Haydock, IBM; Brian Kilcourse, Retail Systems Research

...According to "The Connected Consumer 2012: Evolving Behavior Patterns," an Oracle survey of more than 1,000 consumers, store associates make a big difference; 40 percent of respondents said a savvy store associate can impact their final product selection more than a website. As a result, says David Dorf, Oracle's senior director of technology strategy, "a lot of retailers need to invest in their store associates, and make sure they're armed with at least as much information about their products as can be found on the web."

...To create more compelling marketing campaigns, best-in-class retailers are focusing on collecting psychographic data that will complement demographic information, resulting in more in-depth segmentation, according to David Dorf, Senior Director of Technology Strategy for Oracle. Mobile and social media, he revealed, are two breeding grounds for this psychographic data. "Instead of just collecting information about age, gender and income, retailers today are starting to get information from social sites around interests and opinions to obtain a better picture of consumers," Dorf told Retail TouchPoints. While this more granular approach enables retailers to target consumers and refine marketing strategies to create more relevant campaigns, messaging and offers across channels, a lot of infrastructure is required to collect and manage all of this information. "Retailers need a full-time staff that creates the marketing messages and really engages people so that they'll give up that information," Dorf noted. "Then, of course, technology is required to process the structured and non-structured data and make something of those insights."

The customer experience is fueling IT spending like never before. That was my main takeaway from Oracle Retail CrossTalk 2012...

Shoppers are channel-agnostic; they expect interaction from their mobile devices and the time to deliver is now...In this article, Stores executive editor Susan Reda talks with retail industry experts about what's ahead in 2012. Oracle's David Dorf is among those that weigh in on mobile, BI, personalization and other trends.

Retailers such as Crate and Barrel, Macy's, Sephora, and Target have excelled in connecting mobile marketing initiatives to other channels including email and social media...

Oracle is providing mobile business intelligence to store and district managers, as part of the entire retail operation

... David Dorf, senior director of technology services for Oracle Retail, says consumers "are so deluged with advertising that they've become numb to it. ... Social is the opposite of interruption-based advertising, and that's a big part of what resonates with today's customer. Social is an opportunity to engage her where she lives."

While there's been much focus on consumer mobile devices, there's also much to be gained from using mobile devices equipped to help run the business. This is especially true for retailers when critical, day-to-day decision-makers are in the field visiting stores. Imagine a district manager walking into a store with an iPad that provides current sales trends, inventory reports or labor productivity for that store, complete with exceptions highlighted and the ability to drill into details...

Oracle Retail's David Dorf talks with Debbie Hauss, Retail TouchPoints, about "commerce anywhere" and the new Oracle Retail Release 14

Oracle Retail's David Dorf talks with Debbie Hauss, Retail TouchPoints, about "commerce anywhere" and the new Oracle Retail Release 14

"Amazon is putting enormous pressure on retailers to up their game," said David Dorf, senior director of technology strategy for Oracle Retail. Indeed, the survival of many retailers with actual, brick-and-mortar businesses rests on their ability to stanch showrooming," the rampant consumer practice of scouting out goods at the mall before buying them online at a better price.

"Amazon is putting enormous pressure on retailers to up their game," said David Dorf, senior director of technology strategy for Oracle Retail. Indeed, the survival of many retailers with actual, brick-and-mortar businesses rests on their ability to stanch showrooming," the rampant consumer practice of scouting out goods at the mall before buying them online at a better price.

Customers want retailers to be available to them around the clock, necessitating systems that run constantly. Senior Director of Technology Strategy for Oracle Retail David Dorf offers a preview of an Oracle OpenWorld session devoted to the advantages of running Oracle Retail on Oracle systems.

Customers want retailers to be available to them around the clock, necessitating systems that run constantly. Senior Director of Technology Strategy for Oracle Retail David Dorf offers a preview of an Oracle OpenWorld session devoted to the advantages of running Oracle Retail on Oracle systems.

David Dorf, senior director of technology strategy for Oracle Retail, says the phrase "big data" first began to gain "buzz" status around five years ago. "It has come to represent the exponential growth of data and the complexity of analyzing it," he says. He starts with what has become the generic definition for big data - volume, variety and velocity. "Retailers have always dealt with big data in the sense that they handle thousands of [products], hundreds of stores and a steady stream of transactions," he says. "What's new is the variety of data. Some of it is highly formatted transactional data, but increasingly it's coming from sources such as a Twitter stream where there is natural language that's hard to understand using systems. The other thing that has changed is the velocity. Data is coming at us at a much faster pace."

David Dorf, senior director of technology strategy for Oracle Retail, says the phrase "big data" first began to gain "buzz" status around five years ago. "It has come to represent the exponential growth of data and the complexity of analyzing it," he says. He starts with what has become the generic definition for big data - volume, variety and velocity. "Retailers have always dealt with big data in the sense that they handle thousands of [products], hundreds of stores and a steady stream of transactions," he says. "What's new is the variety of data. Some of it is highly formatted transactional data, but increasingly it's coming from sources such as a Twitter stream where there is natural language that's hard to understand using systems. The other thing that has changed is the velocity. Data is coming at us at a much faster pace."

Speaking at Shop.org Summit 2014 in Seattle last week, David Dorf of Oracle Retail talked about what the Internet of Things means for retailers. "With an increasing number of connected devices, and the development of more and more smart objects on top of all the electronics we currently use in-store and in-office, the potential is extraordinary."

Speaking at Shop.org Summit 2014 in Seattle last week, David Dorf of Oracle Retail talked about what the Internet of Things means for retailers. "With an increasing number of connected devices, and the development of more and more smart objects on top of all the electronics we currently use in-store and in-office, the potential is extraordinary."

New York University marketing professor Scott Galloway makes a strong case that pure-play retailers, whether just brick-and-mortar or just e-commerce, are doomed. He predicts that Amazon will stumble as stores beef up their e-commerce and especially their fulfillment options. Others don't buy that, saying that Amazon is in many ways as special as Jeff Bezos seems to think it is. "I disagree," writes Oracle's David Dorf in his Commerce Anywhere blog of Galloway's assertions. "Not because the logic is flawed, but rather because Amazon is not a typical retailer. I believe they could be profitable if they wanted to but instead choose to continue investing in widening their competitive moat. Not only is their retail business state-of-the-art, but their investments in AWS, tablets, payments, IoT, etc. are complementary, and help to diversify the business (yes, they can do both). Amazon is not your typical pure-play."

As retailers enter new markets, improve the online shopping experience, or expand a product category, underlying technologies can determine the success, speed to market and profitability of each venture. In his annual list of strategic issues for the CIO, tech blogger and Oracle Chief Communications Officer Bob Evans estimates that CIOs will fulfill multiple roles and tackle some key business priorities as they work alongside their peers to effect business change and growth.

Hot Applications For SaaS In Retail Dorf agrees that the agility of data access and analysis afforded by the cloud is fueling its adoption. Leveraging SaaS-based analytics tools, he says, allows retail tech shops to move away from mundane IT tasks and refocus their efforts on real retail work. "SaaS lightens the load on IT by removing the burdens associated with backups, audits, upgrades, and security management. Business insight afforded by SaaS-based analytics tools affords retailers a really good understanding of the data they already have," says Dorf. "As we add more analytics capabilities via the cloud, we can grant that access more quickly via automatic upgrades, which dramatically reduces the retailer's time to value." Because these tools are offered in a pay-only- for-what-you-use style fashioned after the utilities model, retailers can strategically and incrementally build on their data analytics initiatives at their own pace. "Retailers have been sitting on a lot of Big Data for a long time. SaaS-based analytics applies 'Big Science' to that Big Data, allowing merchants to finally extract value from it," says Dorf.

We spoke to various industry experts who revealed their top predictions for the future of retail including Oracle, IBM, Retail Wire ... ...David Dorf / Oracle: Retail will change in many ways, but immediacy will have the biggest impact. Our homes will replenish themselves; our packages will arrive hours after the order; retailers will bid on the right to sell us products in real time; our in-home printers will produce products as we watch. These are examples of consumers having immediate access to the products they want. The technologies to support these scenarios already exist, so we're not waiting on anything new to be invented. All of these scenarios are already a reality in small, independent deployments. It's only a matter of time before retailers evolve their business models to fully embrace this notion of immediacy. That's not to say traditional channels will cease to exist. Physical and digital retail won't fade away, nor will the importance of good customer service. But massive improvements achieved in forecasting, sourcing, and moving products will radically change the landscape in which we trade. Obviously no one will wake up tomorrow to this new reality. It will emerge slowly over many years, but we can already see evidence of the coming changes. Every retailer needs to think in these terms, and make sure each investment moves them closer to the goal.